Hockey and feng shui explained

June 5, 2015

In ice hockey the only possible feng shui that matters is the puck’s.

According to an item buried in the back pages of this morning’s Province newspaper, at least some of the woes of this city’s National Hockey League team, the Vancouver Canucks, may be be laid at the doorstep of the poor feng shui of the building that they play in.

Rogers Arena, we are told, is prey to negative vibes, both because the aforementioned front door is facing south and the whole structure is situated between the two arms of the Georgia Viaduct.

Feng shui is a very old Chinese metaphysical practice aimed at getting the most psychic bang-for-the-buck out of human structures. Practitioners of feng shui seek to harmonize buildings with nature according to various theories about the influence of geography, magnetism and the position of the stars overhead.

Old world order meets new world disorder

While I can accept the premise that Rogers Arena might be flooded with negativity overflowing from frantic drivers on the freeway/bridge that is the Georgia Viaduct, I think that the Province piece entirely misses the forest for the trees that were clear cut to make room for the city of Vancouver in the first place.

What does one poorly positioned building matter when the entire city — thanks to the original, clueless “round eye” settlers — is stuck in the wrong place, feng shui-wise.

Vancouver would be in its feng shui sweet spot today if the Chinese labourers who were employed to build Canada’s transcontinental railway (in exactly the right place, I might add) had also been allowed to lay down the new street grid following the Great Vancouver Fire of 1886.

But they weren’t and as a result Vancouver is 14 kilometres to far to the west and altogether off kilter by about seven degrees (prove me wrong if you can).

The special theory of hockey relativity

There’s another wrinkle to this. Not even the best feng shui in the world could help the Vancouver Canucks, or the modern sport of ice hockey.

Ice hockey is a comparatively recent and entirely Western invention and as such is built around modern rationalist ideas of relativity rather than older mystical notions of determinacy. As such, the sport is largely beyond the help of arts like geomancy, astrology and feng shui.

In hockey, there are few absolutes and no truths to speak of. A goal isn’t necessarily a goal, a loss can be as good as a win and no two people watching a hockey game will ever agree about the penalties called.

Everything that matters is relative: the position of the referees relative to the play, the position of the teams in the standings relative to one another and — ultimately — the position of the puck.

Hockey games do not turn on the fixed position of the stars (and I do not mean the Dallas Stars) or doors and windows in a building, or mountains and rivers; nothing so grand as any of that.

Hockey games (and hockey seasons) really do all come down to the position of that little black puck…relative to the net and vice versa. Click the image to enlarge it.